Moving on

It is with a certain amount of remorse that I recently made the decision to accept a new job, and leave MIT IS&T after a year of employment. As many of you are probably aware, there are more than a few technical challenges and orginizational issues with the IT department here, which pretty much constitutes an IT “horror show” at times. I will spare you all the anecdotes until we come closer to my actual termination. Nevertheless, I always viewed it as a challenge and an opportunity to improve the shop. I’d like to think that I’m leaving them far better off than they were when I got here a year ago, but with a long way to go, and now with some serious staffing shortages.

Hopefully they can weather the storm and not succumb to some sort of horrible IT meltdown sinking them further into oblivion than they already are. To this aim, I have “volunteered” my services to remain on as a paid contractor helping out with some of my core competencies (Redhat RHN, Veritas Netbackup) to bridge the gap. Still, I can’t help feeling a little bit guilty about jumping ship — and yes, I do have some sort of allegiance to the “alma mater,” I suppose.

As for my new job, it’s at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, literally right down the street from where I live. The group I’m going to be working with is the Surgical Planning Laboratory (beware, the web page is out of date), and I’ll be on a small team of systems administrators serving some pretty hardcore research. It sounds like there will be a lot of freedom, and that it’s a good, well-run shop. More updates to come once I actually dive in on 6/26/06.